


To Something More Like My Own Clay

by biextroverts



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/F, Goddesses, Worship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 08:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14281317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biextroverts/pseuds/biextroverts
Summary: Marina Andrieski has never been one for prayer. Cold and alone and quite literally powerless, however, there is plenty of time and reason to implore the gods (or at least one particular goddess) for help.





	To Something More Like My Own Clay

**Author's Note:**

> Title and epigraph are from "Madeleine in Church" by Charlotte Mew.

_Here in the darkness, where this plaster saint_  
_Stands nearer than God stands to our distress_  
_And one small candle shines, but not so faint_  
_As the far lights of everlastingness_  
_I'd rather kneel than over there, in open day_  
_Where Christ is hanging, rather pray_  
_To something more like my own clay_  
_Not too divine._

 

          Marina Andrieski has never been one for prayer.

          It’s not that she wasn’t raised to pray – there are households, she’s certain, where children are taught atheism, or self-sufficiency, or whatever it is they’re calling it these days, but hers was never one of them. In her household, her mother sang  _ We Three Kings _ and  _ Silent Night _ , voice warm and scratchy and thick with her Polish accent, as she bustled about setting up the nativity on the mantle a week before the start of Christmas, and as she hung the boxes of water, incense, and chalk above the front door as the sun fell on January fifth. In her household, Easter meant the bribe of a hunt for pisanki, her mother’s large, callused hands stained a rainbow as proof there would be eggs about the house the next day, in order to convince her to sit still and quiet through the liturgy on Holy Saturday. When she was eight, she dressed in white and received the Eucharist for the first time; when she was fourteen, she was confirmed, and, although her parents were always proud of her, their darling girl, her mother never smiled more or took more pictures than when she climbed the steps to the altar and took that round, dry wafer in her mouth, fighting back the urge to grimace as it dissolved like a lorazepam tablet on her tongue.

         When Marina was younger, her mother would peer into her bedroom each night on the way up to her own room and look in on Marina where she lay burrowed under the covers, a flashlight in one hand and a book – fiction, nonfiction, fantasy, sci-fi, even poetry, sometimes – in the other. “Marina, kochanie,” she would say, rumbling the “r” of Marina’s name in the way of her native language, the way Marina had loved before she had decided it was embarrassing and made her mother sound stupid, “have you said your evening prayers?

          “Earlier,” Marina would say, not even glancing up from whatever book it was she’d been most recently devouring. The routine – her mother looking in and asking after Marina’s practice of her faith, Marina responding in the affirmative – had given Marina practice lying from a very early age – keep the gaze steady, the voice flat, at least for a simple falsehood. It wasn’t that Marina didn’t love her mother, as mortifying as she sometimes found her: it was just that there was something in the idea of prayer that made her shudder. She’d always been a bossy child as well as an anxious one, according to her father, growing as angered as she did panicked whenever anyone – her parents, her playmates, the laws of physics themselves – dared disobey her. It was why she’d taken with such voraciousness to magic, and why every fiber of her being balked at prayer as well; there was nothing more thrilling than the ability to control the uncontrollable, nothing weaker or more disgusting than the admission that one had no power even over one’s own life. 

          Cold and alone and quite literally powerless, however, there is plenty of time and reason for prayer.

          She doesn’t know how long she’s been here, but it had been an eternity before Julia had pulled her back into her body for interrogation, and it’s been another eternity since. That was when she’d started praying, when Julia had revived her, the moment the world had solidified and she’d felt herself lying bloody on the floor of Julia’s apartment, the sudden sharp cold in her fingers and toes a welcome change from the numbness of incorporeality: “you don’t know where I was I don’t want to go back there” at first, and then “you can stop him … you need to do it,” the hot tears running down her frozen cheeks as close as she would ever get to a gesture of submission. Julia hadn’t been a goddess yet, spiritually speaking, but Marina had never placed much stock in canon; she blazed her own trail, and Julia shone with her own divinity, a quietly rebellious marvel, Christ come again in her fierce compassion even for those who had wronged her, those who should have been her enemies. Marina had chosen well in a  protégé, she’d known, as Julia had spoken soothing words in her throaty voice, dragged the rough pad of her thumb along Marina’s cheek to calm her, and too well, perhaps, in a kindred spirit: Julia was better than Marina in every moral sense of the word, if one cared about such things. Even if one didn’t, the goodness was as impressive as it was tiring, and the raw power was simply impressive. And so Marina prayed, on her knees, her hands clasped, the child at the bedside she’d never been, begging the Lord her soul to keep.  _ Our Lady of … whatever you’re the lady of. Help me. Please _ .

          “You’ve gotta be more specific than that.”

          Marina looks up, and there she is, dressed as simply as ever in dark jeans, black top, white cardigan, but radiating an … energy Marina can’t quite describe, like magic, but more so, and fit to Julia like it was made for her specifically by the finest tailor in human history. Marina whimpers in surprise, mouth opening in a little “o” like some sort of imbecile, and Julia offers her a soft half-smile. “I can hear them now. Prayers. Perks of being a full-on goddess, I guess.”

          “A full-on …” 

          Julia offers her hand; Marina stares at it for a moment, a dog considering whether or not to bite, and then accepts, allowing Julia to help her to her feet. She blinks at Julia, wanting to say so many things but knowing how to express none of them, a lifetime of bottling up emotion and declaring complete self-reliance finally coming back to bite her in the ass.  
  
          “Goddess,” Julia says, “yeah.”

          “Wow.”

          “It’s not quite as good a gig as it seems – impersonal, hands-off; my mentor frowns on my visiting too many of my worshippers too frequently.”

          “Worshippers? Is that what you think I am?”

          “You were praying to me.”

          She can’t deny that. Julia spoke to Marina, and Hell has changed her, and she may not be willing to admit that she is the kind of person who prays now, but if Julia had a shrine down here, and Marina herself had freedom of movement, then sure, she would stop by Julia’s altar sometimes to place an offering or two.

          “Life in the Fields of Punishment can make a girl pretty desperate.”

           Julia looks around, taking in the nearly empty room. Its bare black walls and high, narrow window and single metal chair, more an interrogation room than a torture chamber, are not what Marina would have pictured either, but then again, she supposes she’s always been pretty good at creating a Hell for herself inside her own head. “Trust me,” Marina says. “It’s worse than it looks.”

           Julia shrugs. “I believe you.” 

           Marina can’t quite bring herself to say thank you, so she settles for “yeah.”

          Julia’s gaze flits around the room again before settling back on Marina. “So, what’s up?” she says, as if they’re old friends meeting up for coffee and not a goddess and her supplicant carrying on divinely facilitated conversation in the underworld.

          Marina isn’t sure how to answer.  _ I’m miserable _ ? It’s Hell; that’s the point.  _ I’m lonely _ ? As if Julia has time to coddle her.  _ I’ve still got unfinished business because I never told you how I feel about you _ ? She’s not about to do so now; Hell hasn’t destroyed her  _ so  _ entirely, and besides, she assumes goddesses have bigger concerns than the reluctant affections of the hedge witches under whom they once studied.

          “Well, I’m dead.”

          “I don’t think I’m allowed to do anything about that.”

          “Who makes your rules?” Marina asks. She’s not offended, not really; doesn’t know what she would do if she were to be brought back to life, with her safehouse dissolved and magic gone. She genuinely wants to know – who thinks they can boss a goddess around? Neither Brakebills nor Marina herself could make Julia do what they wanted when she was mortal, an amateur magician with no claim to knowing better than anyone else. 

          “There’s a lot of gods and goddesses older than I am. I don’t think Hades or Our Lady Underground would let me bring you back.”

          “Benevolent Earth Mommy still bossing you around, huh?” Julia raises her eyebrows. “Sorry.”

          The word has slipped out before she can do anything about it, and the look of surprise on Julia’s face mirrors the shock Marina feels at having made the apology.

          “Wow,” Julia says. “Hell _has_ changed you.”

          “Shut up.”

          Julia smiles, and Marina smiles back. 

          “There’s nothing specific you can do for me,” she says. “Your … your coming was … helpful. In and of itself. Although if you tell anyone I said that, I will –”

          “No one needs to know,” Julia says, miming locking her lips shut and throwing away the key. She is a goddess, and she is Julia, and Marina thinks she knows what her mother meant now, when she said believing in God got her through each difficult day.

          “It’s appreciated” is as close as Marina will ever get to “thank you.”

          “I should be … going now. It’s a demanding job, goddesshood,” Julia says.

          “Poor you.”

           Julia hums agreement. “It was nice to see you, Marina,” she says. 

          “I’m a pleasure, aren’t I?”

           Julia steps forward, then, and wraps her arms around Marina’s torso for an instant. Marina stiffens at first, and then returns the hug, clinging more tightly than even the most thoroughly repressed corners of her mind knew she needed for a moment before reluctantly but quickly letting go. She knows Julia knows she’s grateful by the way Julia smiles at her, small and brief and warm, before blipping out of existence before Marina’s eyes.

           Marina Andrieski has never been one for either testament, or for the liturgy, or for the tired traditions of the Vatican. When the right divinity comes along, however, she is not so opposed to prayer.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave kudos and comments if you enjoyed; I live for feedback!


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